1 Valley View Chapel March 4, 2012 A Matter of Trust, Part 4 Principles You Can Trust Part 2 Introduction Scott Adams Dilbert character is a favorite of millions. One of my favorite strips has Dilbert s diabolical boss making an announcement to the cast of office characters sitting around a conference table. I ve hired the Dogbert Touchy-Feely Institute to teach us about teamwork. Dogbert begins: We ll start with an exercise about trust. I want each of you to sign blank checks and give them to me. Dilbert asks: What will this teach us about trust? Dogbert replies: It will teach you that trust is an excellent quality for other people to have. If you are a Dilbert reader, then you know that Dogbert can t be trusted with anyone s blank check. When it comes to trust, the character of the one in whom we place our trust is allimportant. Woodrow Kroll drove this point home in an article in Decision magazine: The focus of biblical faith is on God s character...god speaks to us through his Word. Yet some people say, The Bible cannot be trusted... Biblical faith begins with a bedrock commitment to the character of God. Last week I shared with you three principles you can trust when it comes to the management of our lives. I asked us to consider whether or not we really trust God. The first principle is to take an inventory to determine if there is any area of our lives in which we do not trust God completely. The second is to recognize God as the source of every blessing that we have. The third is to understand God s principles of stewardship. Surrender everything to God This morning we come to the fourth part of the trust test which is: surrender everything
2 to God. At some point in our spiritual journey, we must confront the question: Am I going to live like a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ or am I going to live functionally as a non- Christian? Many Christians who are going to heaven when they die have adopted a lifestyle that largely ignores God s principles, promises and priorities. Jeremiah described the unsurrendered person this way: He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. Jeremiah 17:6 (NIV) He will be like a bush in the wastelands. I used to watch old westerns on TV and inevitably I would see tumbleweed flying across the prairie, driven by the wind. A tumbleweed has no roots and no fruit. That s how God describes the unsurrendered Christian. The surrendered Christian is described in Jeremiah 17:7-8, "But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit." (NIV) Both the unsurrendered and the surrendered person experienced similar circumstances - a parched land due to drought. Yet one was blessed while the other was not. Why? Because one was planted by the water of God s power and sufficiency. The other wasn t close enough to the life-giving stream to receive the benefit. The key to God s blessing is a heart fully yielded to God s control. Dr. F.B. Meyer was one of England s outstanding preachers in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. In spite of his outward success, he came to the conclusion that his ministry was spiritually superficial. As he sat dejectedly in his study, he lay his head on his desk and fell asleep. He dreamed that Christ stood before him and said, Let me have the keys to your life. Dr. Meyer reached into his pocket and gave Christ a set of keys. The Lord asked, Are all the keys here? The preacher replied: Yes, Lord, all except the key to one small room in my life. Jesus handed the keys back to Dr. Meyer and said, If you cannot trust me with all the keys of your life, then I cannot accept any of the keys. At that moment, F.B. Meyer awakened. So real had been the dream and so convicted by the truth that he had only made a partial surrender to Christ that he reached into his pocket, took out all his keys, fell on his knees and cried out: Lord, take the keys to all
3 the rooms of my life! Ravi Zacharias preached a message in our home church, challenging us to make a full surrender of our lives to God. On April 22, 1973, Emily and I surrendered everything we had to the Lord, giving him all the keys of our lives. That night we gave the Lord the undisputed right to lead us wherever he wanted us to go and to take whatever we had and use it for his purposes and glory. Almost 39 years later, we wouldn t take back that commitment for anything the world could offer us. Stewardship is not about money. It s about trust, commitment, surrender, Lordship. Test God s Promises The fifth principle you can trust is to test God s promises. We must not omit any of the first four steps in your eagerness to test God s promises. We must first take an inventory. Then we need to recognize daily God as the source of all our blessings. Then we need to understand and apply God s four stewardship principles: we are the managers and not the owners of all that we have; we grow when we give; we will obey God s principles today; and we understand that giving to God is the only activity on earth that has eternal consequences. Testing God s promises is the climax of our total surrender to Christ. The Scriptural basis for testing God s promises is found in Malachi 3:10, Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the LORD Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. (NIV) God was angry with his people over what they given to him in their offerings. God confronted the people through his prophet: When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?" Malachi 1:8 (NIV) Instead of offering their best animals for the prescribed sacrifices, they brought sick, crippled, and diseased animals to the temple. Why did they bring these inferior sacrifices? Because they didn t believe that God would provide for them if they gave the kind of sacrifices that he commanded.
4 This is the only place in the Bible where God challenged his people to test him because God knew that many of his people waver in their trust when it comes to tithing their material resources Many Christians are like the guy in the cartoon who s about to be baptized. When he goes under, he lifts up his wallet so that it won t get baptized. God makes a promise to those who bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, which is the Old Testament equivalent of the local church. He says, I ll provide for you. I ll take care of you. Your needs will be met. Emily and I learned a long time ago that 90% with God s blessing goes a lot farther than 100% without God s blessing. If Malachi 3:10 isn t true, I ll stop preaching. If Malachi 3:10 isn t true, how do I know that John 3:16 is true? If Malachi 3:10 isn t true, then the Bible isn t true. If this book teaches me to swindle large amounts of money from good, decent people - if Christianity is just a religious version of Enron then I m no more ethical than Bernie Madoff. Every Christian comes to a defining moment when he or she chooses to believe all the promises of God. Every Christian comes a defining moment when he or she chooses to make a total commitment to order every one of life s priorities and decisions around God s timeless and irrevocable promises. Conclusion Colin Smith is the pastor of the Arlington Heights, IL Evangelical Free Church. He told about how he used to go to auctions with his father when he was a boy. His father gave him two pieces of advice when it came to auctions: Number one: Don t scratch your nose at the wrong time. Number two: Make sure you know your upper limit price. Pastor Smith then made the application: The great danger is that we walk into the Christian life knowing clearly our upper limit price but Jesus doesn t allow us to set that. Our calling is to a life of unconditional obedience where the upper limit price is unknown. Many Christians set an upper limit price with Jesus. I ll serve you, Lord, but don t ask me to teach Sunday school. I love you, Lord, but don t ask me to serve on a committee. I ll worship you, Lord, but don t ask me to tell anybody about Jesus. I believe in you, Lord, but don t ask me to join a small group. I m your fully devoted follower, Lord, but don t ask me to tithe. Do you have an upper limit price? 32 years ago, Emily and I were living in Massachusetts where we had always lived. Family was nearby. Friends were close at hand. The ocean was 40 minutes away. And it was only 20 miles to Fenway Park!
5 But God laid on our hearts the burden to go to the Chicago suburb of Oak Lawn. We didn t know a thing about the Midwest. The only people we knew out there were the district superintendent and his wife. We were scared to death at the thought of moving so far away from all the earthly surroundings and security we had ever known to go to serve the Lord in a dying church. So, we went to one of our favorite places Field s Park in Brockton, MA. We got alone with God and remembered the total commitment we had made almost 7 years earlier. That day we decided that there could be no upper limit price. We decided to step out of the boat and obey God. We haven t lived in New England since the second week of February 1980. But because we didn t set an upper limit price and were willing to let God call the shots, we have always been in the best possible place! God wants your fully surrendered life before he wants a dime of your money. Having made that absolute surrender, he expects obedience to his principles. Inner joy, peace and contentment are directly proportional to the degree of our surrender. Many years ago, I heard the late Bible teacher, Dr. Theodore Epp make a statement that I have never forgotten: With obedience comes blessing. With disobedience comes judgment. I heard a message by Pastor Ed Young of Fellowship Bible Church near Dallas on the subject of Commitment. Pastor Young gave the finest definition of commitment I ve ever heard: Commitment is to pledge yourself to a position no matter what the cost. When you think about the Christ dying on the cross, doesn t that definition sum up what he did for us? He pledged himself to a position no matter what the cost. Our Redeemer and Lord deserves nothing less from his fully devoted followers. Unless we re willing to define commitment the way Jesus defined commitment, we can t claim to be his fully devoted follower. A good place to start is with tithing. Why? Because it s measurable and therefore a pretty good indicator of obedience. While it is possible to not be a fully devoted follower and still tithe, it is impossible to be a fully devoted follower of Christ and not tithe. Several years ago I got an email from a person who read our annual report and who is in leadership in another church. He was amazed to see that though his church had 3 times the membership of Valley View Chapel their budget is $250,000 less. He couldn t understand how the VVC family could be so generous in their giving. When a church is totally committed to three things following Jesus Christ, obeying the truth of Scripture, and reaching people for Christ and teaching them how to grow into fully devoted followers - there won t be a money problem. Money is never the most important issue. Commitment is the issue. Obedience is the issue. Trust is the issue. Faith is the issue.
6 There is no better time to cross the line of total commitment and trust and obey God and his Word than right now. You will never regret the day when you said: I want Jesus Christ to be the Lord of everything in life that pertains to me.